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118-813: A vernacular subgroup, from 1860 to 1935, of the Territorial Style is known as the Folk Territorial , Folk Carpenter , and Spanish Folk Territorial . The style was found "particularly in Northern New Mexico", and consisted of applied wood Greek Revival and Gothic details of the Spanish missions in New Mexico , added to the building styles of the Pueblo architecture the Northern New Mexico adobe building construction style. When

236-402: A Greek Revival feel to the vernacular architecture that they found in New Mexico. The Anglos did three things to the adobe architecture. First they added Greek Revival trim to the windows and doors. In some cases shutters were placed by the windows, which were just tacked onto existing structures. Because of the shortage of milled lumber, one of the first things that Kearney did was import

354-569: A Selinote (1851). The controversy was to inspire von Klenze's "Aegina" room at the Munich Glyptothek of 1830, the first of his many speculative reconstructions of Greek colour. Hittorff lectured in Paris in 1829–1830 that Greek temples had originally been painted ochre yellow, with the moulding and sculptural details in red, blue, green and gold. While this may or may not have been the case with older wooden or plain stone temples, it

472-485: A base of stone which protected the more vulnerable elements from damp. The roofs were probably of thatch with eaves which overhung the permeable walls. Many larger houses, such as those at Delos, were built of stone and plastered. The roofing material for the substantial house was tile. Houses of the wealthy had mosaic floors and demonstrated the Classical style. Many houses centred on a wide passage or "pasta" which ran

590-418: A building in which each of these could be housed. This led to the development of temples. The ancient Greeks perceived order in the universe, and in turn, applied order and reason to their creations. Their humanist philosophy put mankind at the centre of things and promoted well-ordered societies and the development of democracy. At the same time, the respect for human intellect demanded a reason, and promoted

708-651: A different course in a number of countries, lasting until the 1860s and the American Civil War and later in Scotland . Modern-day architects are recreating this design by building houses similar to the Greek Revival. These houses are characterized by their symmetrical and balanced proportions, typically featuring a bold, pedimented portico with arched openings. The symmetrical façade is divided into two equal halves. Much Greek Revival architecture used

826-514: A large number of sites around the Eastern Mediterranean , including Mainland Greece , Western Asia Minor , Southern and Central Italy . Being more expensive and labour-intensive to produce than thatch, their introduction has been explained by the fact that their fireproof quality would have given desired protection to the costly temples. As a side-effect, it has been assumed that the new stone and tile construction also ushered in

944-399: A lintel, which in a stone building limited the possible width of the opening. The distance between columns was similarly affected by the nature of the lintel, columns on the exterior of buildings and carrying stone lintels being closer together than those on the interior, which carried wooden lintels. Door and window openings narrowed towards the top. Temples were constructed without windows,

1062-473: A low pitched gable or pediment. The earliest temples, built to enshrine statues of deities, were probably of wooden construction, later replaced by the more durable stone temples many of which are still in evidence today. The signs of the original timber nature of the architecture were maintained in the stone buildings. A few of these temples are very large, with several, such as the Temple of Zeus Olympus and

1180-401: A millennium of Greek pottery making, but also in the architecture that was to emerge in the 6th century. The major development that occurred was in the growing use of the human figure as the major decorative motif, and the increasing surety with which humanity, its mythology, activities and passions were depicted. The development in the depiction of the human form in pottery was accompanied by

1298-406: A naturally occurring sloping site where people could sit, rather than a containing structure. Colonnades encircling buildings, or surrounding courtyards provided shelter from the sun and from sudden winter storms. The light of Greece may be another important factor in the development of the particular character of ancient Greek architecture. The light is often extremely bright, with both the sky and

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1416-399: A passion for enquiry, logic, challenge, and problem-solving. The architecture of the ancient Greeks, and in particular, temple architecture, responds to these challenges with a passion for beauty, and for order and symmetry which is the product of a continual search for perfection, rather than a simple application of a set of working rules. There is a clear division between the architecture of

1534-430: A prairie dog town." Soon "increasing numbers of Anglo-Americans began to arrive with new materials and architectural ideas based on those of the communities from which they came. Millwork and brick were imported from St. Louis and Kansas City. The small grilled and glass-less windows began to give way to double hung glazed sashes often provided with slatted shutters on the outside." The Anglos were attempting to create

1652-431: A rectangular hall with a hearth in the centre, was the largest room in the palaces, and also larger houses. Sun-dried brick above rubble bases were the usual materials, with wooden columns and roof-beams. Rows of ashlar stone orthostats lined the base of walls in some prominent locations. The Minoan architecture of Crete was of the trabeated form like that of ancient Greece. It employed wooden columns with capitals, but

1770-597: A regular grid of paved streets and an agora or central market place surrounded by a colonnade or stoa . The completely restored Stoa of Attalos can be seen in Athens . Towns were also equipped with a public fountain where water could be collected for household use. The development of regular town plans is associated with Hippodamus of Miletus , a pupil of Pythagoras . Public buildings became "dignified and gracious structures", and were sited so that they related to each other architecturally. The propylon or porch, formed

1888-719: A result of Alexander's conquest of other lands, and later as a result of the rise of the Roman Empire, which adopted much of Greek culture. Before the Hellenic era, two major cultures had dominated the region: the Minoan ( c.  2800  – c.  1100 BC ), and the Mycenaean (c. 1500–1100 BC). Minoan is the name given by modern historians to the culture of the people of ancient Crete , known for its elaborate and richly decorated Minoan palaces , and for its pottery,

2006-409: A series of solid stone cylinders or "drums" that rest on each other without mortar, but were sometimes centred with a bronze pin. The columns are wider at the base than at the top, tapering with an outward curve known as entasis . Each column has a capital of two parts, the upper, on which rests the lintels, being square and called the abacus . The part of the capital that rises from the column itself

2124-598: A similar development in sculpture. The tiny stylised bronzes of the Geometric period gave way to life-sized highly formalised monolithic representation in the Archaic period. The Classical period was marked by a rapid development towards idealised but increasingly lifelike depictions of gods in human form. This development had a direct effect on the sculptural decoration of temples, as many of the greatest extant works of ancient Greek sculpture once adorned temples, and many of

2242-453: A source of decorative motifs employed by ancient Greek architects as particularly in evidence in the volutes of capitals of the Ionic and Corinthian Orders. The ancient Greek architects took a philosophic approach to the rules and proportions. The determining factor in the mathematics of any notable work of architecture was its ultimate appearance. The architects calculated for perspective, for

2360-409: A treasury or repository for trophies and gifts. The chambers were lit by a single large doorway, fitted with a wrought iron grill. Some rooms appear to have been illuminated by skylights. On the stylobate, often completely surrounding the naos, stand rows of columns. Each temple is defined as being of a particular type, with two terms: one describing the number of columns across the entrance front, and

2478-449: A triangular structure called the pediment. The tympanum is the triangular space framed by the cornices and the location of the most significant sculptural decoration on the exterior of the building. Every temple rested on a masonry base called the crepidoma , generally of three steps, of which the upper one which carried the columns was the stylobate . Masonry walls were employed for temples from about 600 BC onwards. Masonry of all types

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2596-490: Is a second horizontal stage called the frieze . The frieze is one of the major decorative elements of the building and carries a sculptured relief. In the case of Ionic and Corinthian architecture, the relief decoration runs in a continuous band, but in the Doric order, it is divided into sections called metopes , which fill the spaces between vertical rectangular blocks called triglyphs . The triglyphs are vertically grooved like

2714-466: Is called the echinus. It differs according to the order, being plain in the Doric order, fluted in the Ionic and foliate in the Corinthian. Doric and usually Ionic capitals are cut with vertical grooves known as fluting . This fluting or grooving of the columns is a retention of an element of the original wooden architecture. The columns of a temple support a structure that rises in two main stages,

2832-506: Is predominantly found in two centres, Berlin and Munich . In both locales, Doric was the court style rather than a popular movement and was heavily patronised by Frederick William II of Prussia and Ludwig I of Bavaria as the expression of their desires for their respective seats to become the capital of Germany. The earliest Greek building was the Brandenburg Gate (1788–91) by Carl Gotthard Langhans , who modelled it loosely on

2950-416: Is stone. Limestone was readily available and easily worked. There is an abundance of high quality white marble both on the mainland and islands, particularly Paros and Naxos . This finely grained material was a major contributing factor to precision of detail, both architectural and sculptural, that adorned ancient Greek architecture. Deposits of high-quality potter's clay were found throughout Greece and

3068-729: Is tempting to see the Greek Revival as the expression of Regency authoritarianism, then the changing conditions of life in Britain made Doric the loser of the Battle of the Styles , dramatically symbolized by the selection of Charles Barry 's Gothic design for the Palace of Westminster in 1836. Nevertheless, Greek continued to be in favour in Scotland well into the 1870s in the singular figure of Alexander Thomson , known as Greek Thomson. Following

3186-593: The Academy and University of Athens , the Zappeion , and the National Library of Greece . The most prominent architects in this style were northern Europeans such as Christian and Theophil Hansen and Ernst Ziller and German-trained Greeks such as Stamatios Kleanthis and Panagis Kalkos . Despite the prestige of ancient Greece among Europe's educated elite, most people had minimal direct knowledge of

3304-563: The Act of Union , the Napoleonic Wars , and the clamour for political reform. William Wilkins 's winning design for the public competition for Downing College, Cambridge announced the Greek style was to become a dominant idiom in architecture, especially for public buildings of this sort. Wilkins and Robert Smirke went on to build some of the most important buildings of the era, including

3422-595: The Bank of Pennsylvania . Latrobe's design for the U.S. Capitol was an imaginative interpretation of the classical orders not constrained by historical precedent, incorporating American motifs such as corncobs and tobacco leaves. This idiosyncratic approach became typical of the American attitude to Greek detailing. His overall plan for the Capitol did not survive, though many of his interiors did. He also did notable work on

3540-1101: The Doric Order , the Ionic Order and the Corinthian Order , was to have a profound effect on Western architecture of later periods. The architecture of ancient Rome grew out of that of Greece and maintained its influence in Italy unbroken until the present day. From the Renaissance , revivals of Classicism have kept alive not only the precise forms and ordered details of Greek architecture, but also its concept of architectural beauty based on balance and proportion. The successive styles of Neoclassical architecture and Greek Revival architecture followed and adapted ancient Greek styles closely. The mainland and islands of Greece are very rocky, with deeply indented coastline, and rugged mountain ranges with few substantial forests. The most freely available building material

3658-652: The Greek War of Independence , Romantic Nationalist ideology encouraged the use of historically Greek architectural styles in place of Ottoman or pan-European ones. Classical architecture was used for secular public buildings, while Byzantine architecture was preferred for churches. Examples of Greek Revival architecture in Greece include the Old Royal Palace (now the home of the Parliament of Greece ),

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3776-686: The Monumental Church and the Washington Monument , as well as George Hadfield and Gabriel Manigault . At the same time, the popular appetite for the Greek was sustained by architectural pattern books, the most important of which was Asher Benjamin's The Practical House Carpenter (1830). This guide helped create the proliferation of Greek homes seen especially in northern New York State and in Connecticut's former Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio . The discovery that

3894-534: The Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens, which seats 45,000 people, was restored in the 19th century and was used in the 1896, 1906 and 2004 Olympic Games . The architecture of ancient Greece is of a trabeated or " post and lintel " form, i.e. it is composed of upright beams (posts) supporting horizontal beams (lintels). Although the existent buildings of the era are constructed in stone, it is clear that

4012-585: The Parthenon , are between 60 and 80 metres (approx. 200–260 feet) in length. The largest temples, mainly Ionic and Corinthian, but including the Doric Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Agrigento , were between 90 and 120 metres (approx. 300–390 feet) in length. The temple rises from a stepped base or stylobate , which elevates the structure above the ground on which it stands. Early examples, such as

4130-572: The Porte , British travellers, artists and architects went to Greece and Turkey in ever larger numbers to study ancient Greek monuments and excavate or collect antiquities. The Greek War of Independence ended in 1832; Lord Byron 's participation and death during this had brought it additional prominence. The style was attractive in Russia because they shared the Eastern Orthodox faith with

4248-748: The Propylaea in Athens . Ten years after the death of Frederick the Great , the Berlin Akademie initiated a competition for a monument to the king that would promote "morality and patriotism." Friedrich Gilly 's unexecuted design for a temple raised above the Leipziger Platz caught the tenor of high idealism that the Germans sought in Greek architecture and was enormously influential on Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leo von Klenze . Schinkel

4366-735: The Theatre Royal , Covent Garden (1808–1809), the General Post Office (1824–1829) and the British Museum (1823–1848), the Wilkins Building of University College London (1826–1830), and the National Gallery (1832–1838). One of the greatest British proponents of the style was Decimus Burton . In London , twenty three Greek Revival Commissioners' churches were built between 1817 and 1829,

4484-404: The entablature and the pediment . The entablature is the major horizontal structural element supporting the roof and encircling the entire building. It is composed of three parts. Resting on the columns is the architrave made of a series of stone "lintels" that spanned the space between the columns, and meet each other at a joint directly above the centre of each column. Above the architrave

4602-520: The 6th century BC, where the rows of columns supporting the roof the cella rise higher than the outer walls, unnecessary if roof trusses are employed as an integral part of the wooden roof. The indication is that initially all the rafters were supported directly by the entablature, walls and hypostyle, rather than on a trussed wooden frame, which came into use in Greek architecture only in the 3rd century BC. Ancient Greek buildings of timber, clay and plaster construction were probably roofed with thatch. With

4720-513: The Americans, under General Stephen Kearney , arrived in New Mexico in August, 1846 they did not find the fabled and fabulous cities that they had expected. Rather they found a built environment that was totally alien to what they were accustomed. James Bennett, a U.S. dragoon , describes Las Vegas, New Mexico as "a great pile of unbaked brick" adding, "Upon closer inspection everything about

4838-718: The Dorian people who lived on the Greek mainland. Following these events, there was a period from which only a village level of culture seems to have existed. This period is thus often referred to as the Greek Dark Age . The art history of the Hellenic era is generally subdivided into four periods: the Protogeometric (1100–900 BC), the Geometric (900–700 BC), the Archaic (700–500 BC) and the Classical (500–323 BC) with sculpture being further divided into Severe Classical, High Classical and Late Classical. The first signs of

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4956-399: The Doric columns, and retain the form of the wooden beams that would once have supported the roof. The upper band of the entablature is called the cornice , which is generally ornately decorated on its lower edge. The cornice retains the shape of the beams that would once have supported the wooden roof at each end of the building. At the front and rear of each temple, the entablature supports

5074-485: The East, the strips were designed to be soldered together, producing a roof much longer lasting and much less leaky than the flat roofs that were commonly used. The style remained in use until 1900. It came back into use in 1930 in the form of Territorial Revival architecture . Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture was a style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in

5192-478: The Greek Doric order in the earlier version found in buildings leading up to the Parthenon in Athens. This contrasted significantly with later Greek Hellenistic architecture and Roman architecture . Greek Doric columns are typically rather thick, often tapering towards the top, always fluted , and have complicated rules for the entablature above the columns. Additionally, the columns go straight down to

5310-526: The Greek Revival idiom was considered an expression of local nationalism and civic virtue in each country that adopted it, and freedom from the lax detail and frivolity that then characterized the architecture of France and Italy , two countries where the style never really took architecturally. Greek Revival architecture was embraced in Great Britain , Germany , and the United States , where

5428-578: The Greek mainland, the Peloponnese , the Aegean Islands , and in colonies in Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC. Ancient Greek architecture is best known for its temples , many of which are found throughout the region, with the Parthenon regarded, now as in ancient times, as

5546-526: The Greeks had painted their temples influenced the later development of the style. The archaeological dig at Aegina and Bassae in 1811–1812 by Cockerell, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg , and Karl Haller von Hallerstein had disinterred painted fragments of masonry daubed with impermanent colours. This revelation was a direct contradiction of Winckelmann 's notion of the Greek temple as timeless, fixed, and pure in its whiteness. In 1823, Samuel Angell discovered

5664-500: The Greeks. The historic centre of Saint Petersburg was rebuilt by Alexander I of Russia , with many buildings giving the Greek Revival a Russian debut. The Saint Petersburg Bourse on Vasilievsky Island has a temple front with 44 Doric columns. Quarenghi 's design for the Manege "mimics a 5th-century BC Athenian temple with a portico of eight Doric columns bearing a pediment and bas reliefs". Leo von Klenze 's expansion of

5782-534: The Islands, with major deposits near Athens. It was used not only for pottery vessels but also roof tiles and architectural decoration. The climate of Greece is maritime, with both the coldness of winter and the heat of summer tempered by sea breezes. This led to a lifestyle where many activities took place outdoors. Hence temples were placed on hilltops, their exteriors designed as a visual focus of gatherings and processions, while theatres were often an enhancement of

5900-464: The Olympians at Athens being well over 300 feet in length, but most were less than half this size. It appears that some of the large temples began as wooden constructions in which the columns were replaced piecemeal as stone became available. This, at least was the interpretation of the historian Pausanias looking at the Temple of Hera at Olympia in the 2nd century AD. The stone columns are made of

6018-1011: The Supreme Court interior (1806–1807), and his masterpiece was the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Baltimore (1805–1821). Latrobe claimed, "I am a bigoted Greek in the condemnation of the Roman architecture", but he did not rigidly impose Greek forms. "Our religion," he said, "requires a church wholly different from the temple, our legislative assemblies and our courts of justice, buildings of entirely different principles from their basilicas; and our amusements could not possibly be performed in their theatres or amphitheatres." His circle of junior colleagues became an informal school of Greek revivalists, and his influence shaped

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6136-651: The Temple of Apollo on the Cycladic island of Delos , in the collection of books that he (and Stuart in some cases) produced, largely funded by special subscription by the Society of Dilettanti. See more in Terry Friedman's book The Georgian Parish Church , Spire Books, 2004. Seen in its wider social context, Greek Revival architecture sounded a new note of sobriety and restraint in public buildings in Britain around 1800 as an assertion of nationalism attendant on

6254-475: The Temple of Zeus at Olympus, have two steps, but the majority, like the Parthenon, have three, with the exceptional example of the Temple of Apollo at Didyma having six. The core of the building is a masonry-built "naos" within which is a cella, a windowless room originally housing the statue of the god. The cella generally has a porch or "pronaos" before it, and perhaps a second chamber or "antenaos" serving as

6372-482: The ancient Greek civilization before the middle of the 18th century. The monuments of Greek antiquity were known chiefly from Pausanias and other literary sources. Visiting Ottoman Greece was difficult and dangerous business prior to the period of stagnation beginning with the Great Turkish War . Few tourists visited Athens during the first half of the 18th century, and none made any significant study of

6490-512: The appeal of ancient Greece rose in the 19th century along with the growing acceptance of democracy. This made Greek architecture suddenly more attractive in both the North and the South, for differing ideological purposes: for the North, Greek architecture symbolized the freedom of the Greeks; in the South it symbolized the cultural glories enabled by a slave society. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of

6608-519: The architect Polykleitos the Younger . Greek towns of substantial size also had a palaestra or a gymnasium , the social centre for male citizens which included spectator areas, baths, toilets and club rooms. Other buildings associated with sports include the hippodrome for horse racing, of which only remnants have survived, and the stadium for foot racing, 600 feet in length, of which examples exist at Olympia, Delphi, Epidaurus and Ephesus, while

6726-455: The architectural ruins. It was not until the expedition to Greece funded by the Society of Dilettanti of 1751 by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett that serious archaeological inquiry began in earnest. Stuart and Revett's findings, published in 1762 (first volume) as The Antiquities of Athens , along with Julien-David Le Roy's Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (1758) were

6844-487: The assembly of Greek buildings in Helsinki city centre is particularly notable. At the cultural edges of Europe, in the Swedish region of western Finland, Greek Revival motifs might be grafted on a purely Baroque design, as in the design for Oravais Church by Jacob Rijf, 1792. A Greek Doric order, rendered in the anomalous form of pilasters , contrasts with the hipped roof and boldly scaled cupola and lantern, of wholly traditional Baroque inspiration. In Austria , one of

6962-518: The best examples of this style is the Parliament Building designed by Theophil Hansen . In Canada , Montreal architect John Ostell designed a number of prominent Greek Revival buildings, including the first building on the McGill University campus and Montreal's original Custom House, now part of the Pointe-à-Callière Museum . The Toronto Street Post Office , completed in 1853, is another Canadian example. While some 18th-century Americans had feared Greek democracy, sometimes called mobocracy ,

7080-412: The city now enjoys a striking visual uniformity, and as such is sometimes whimsically referred to as "the Athens of the North". Within Regency architecture the style already competed with Gothic Revival and the continuation of the less stringent Palladian and Neoclassical styles of Georgian architecture , the other two remaining more common for houses, both in towns and English country houses . If it

7198-450: The coloured metopes of Temple C at Selinunte , Sicily and published them in 1826. The French architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff witnessed the exhibition of Angell's find and endeavoured to excavate Temple B at Selinus. His imaginative reconstructions of this temple were exhibited in Rome and Paris in 1824 and he went on to publish these as Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (1830) and later in Restitution du Temple d'Empedocle

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7316-462: The complete human form, and very human behaviour. The home of the gods was thought to be Olympus , the highest mountain in Greece. The most important deities were: Zeus , the supreme god and ruler of the sky; Hera , his wife and goddess of marriage; Athena , goddess of wisdom; Poseidon , the god of the sea; Demeter , goddess of the harvest; Apollo , the god of the sun, law, healing, plague, reason, music and poetry; Artemis , goddess of chastity,

7434-489: The construction (1833) of the row of Greek temples at Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island . These had varied functions within a home for retired sailors. From 1820 to 1850, the Greek Revival style dominated the United States, such as the Benjamin F. Clough House in Waltham, Massachusetts . It could also be found as far west as Springfield, Illinois . Examples of vernacular Greek Revival continued to be built even farther west, such as in Charles City, Iowa . This style

7552-476: The courses. To further simulate a Greek Revival appearance the Anglos replaced the round tree trunk columns employed by the Hispanic builders with square ones, typically with chamfered corners. Often they were embellished with trim to simulate capitals and bases . Finally the Anglos introduced the pitched roof and the material to produce them. The ternplate roof was a metal one, made in strips and composed of an alloy of tin and lead . Manufactured in

7670-416: The earlier mudbrick and wood walls, were strong enough to support the weight of a tiled roof. The earliest finds of roof tiles of the Archaic period in Greece are documented from a very restricted area around Corinth , where fired tiles began to replace thatched roofs at the temples of Apollo and Poseidon between 700 and 650 BC. Spreading rapidly, roof tiles were within fifty years in evidence for

7788-537: The early 1750s, intellectual curiosity quickly led to a desire among the elite to emulate the style. Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by George Lyttelton to produce the first Greek building in England, the garden temple at Hagley Hall (1758–59). A number of British architects in the second half of the century took up the expressive challenge of the Doric from their aristocratic patrons, including Benjamin Henry Latrobe (notably at Hammerwood Park and Ashdown House ) and Sir John Soane , but it remained

7906-416: The elegance of its proportions and the effects of light on its surfaces might be viewed from all angles. Nikolaus Pevsner refers to "the plastic shape of the [Greek] temple [...] placed before us with a physical presence more intense, more alive than that of any later building". The formal vocabulary of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the division of architectural style into three defined orders:

8024-658: The end of overhanging eaves in Greek architecture, as they made the need for an extended roof as rain protection for the mudbrick walls obsolete. Vaults and arches were not generally used, but begin to appear in tombs (in a "beehive" or cantilevered form such as used in Mycenaea) and occasionally, as an external feature, exedrae of voussoired construction from the 5th century BC. The dome and vault never became significant structural features, as they were to become in ancient Roman architecture . Most ancient Greek temples were rectangular, and were approximately twice as long as they were wide, with some notable exceptions such as

8142-460: The enormous Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens with a length of nearly 2 1 ⁄ 2 times its width. A number of surviving temple-like structures are circular, and are referred to as tholos . The smallest temples are less than 25 metres (approx. 75 feet) in length, or in the case of the circular tholos , in diameter. The great majority of temples are between 30 and 60 metres (approx. 100–200 feet) in length. A small group of Doric temples, including

8260-541: The entrance to temple sanctuaries and other significant sites with the best-surviving example being the Propylaea on the Acropolis of Athens . The bouleuterion was a large public building with a hypostyle hall that served as a court house and as a meeting place for the town council ( boule ). Remnants of bouleuterion survive at Athens, Olympia and Miletus, the latter having held up to 1,200 people. Every Greek town had an open-air theatre . These were used for both public meetings as well as dramatic performances. The theatre

8378-404: The evolution from Doric to Corinthian was not inexorable. Both events were to cause a minor scandal. The emerging understanding that Greek art was subject to changing forces of environment and culture was a direct assault on the architectural rationalism of the day. Ancient Greek architecture Ancient Greek architecture came from the Greeks , or Hellenes, whose culture flourished on

8496-497: The first accurate surveys of ancient Greek architecture. The rediscovery of the three relatively easily accessible Greek temples at Paestum in Southern Italy created huge interest throughout Europe, and prints by Piranesi and others were widely circulated. The Napoleonic Wars denied access to France and Italy to traditional Grand Tourists, especially from Britain. Aided by close diplomatic relations between Britain and

8614-683: The first volume of The Antiquities of Athens . He never practiced in the style, but he played an important role in introducing Greek Revival architecture to the United States. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe as surveyor of public building, and Latrobe designed a number of important public buildings in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia , including work on the United States Capitol and

8732-529: The floor ( stylobate ) with no distinct base - this last aspect was often skipped by architects who followed the other Greek conventions, for example in the Brandenburg Gate . The understanding of actual Greek architecture was based on ruined buildings, and awareness of the full range of ornamentation, and colour, on ancient Greek temples emerged over the period. Architects were aware of the large pedimental sculptures and metope reliefs, and copied these expensive elements when funds allowed, but far less often had

8850-445: The full range of antefixes and akroterions . Greek temples normally had no windows except perhaps in the roof, posing a problem for modern buildings for most purposes, which was generally brushed aside. Many buildings that needed to fulfill modern functions concentrated on having an impressive temple-style front, giving the other faces of the building a more practical design up to the cornice . In Germany, Greek Revival architecture

8968-406: The hunt and the wilderness; Aphrodite , goddess of love; Ares , God of war; Hermes , the god of commerce and travellers, Hephaestus , the god of fire and metalwork; and Dionysus , the god of wine and fruit-bearing plants. Worship, like many other activities, was done in the community, in the open. However, by 600 BC, the gods were often represented by large statues and it was necessary to provide

9086-592: The idiom was regarded as being free from ecclesiastical and aristocratic associations and was appealed to each country's emerging embrace of classical liberalism . The taste for all things Greek in furniture and interior design, sometimes called Neo-Grec , reached its peak in the beginning of the 19th century when the designs of Thomas Hope influenced a number of decorative styles known variously as Neoclassical , Empire , Russian Empire, and Regency architecture in Great Britain. Greek Revival architecture took

9204-688: The interior of large monumental tombs such as the Lion Tomb at Knidos (c. 350 BC). The Greek word for the family or household, oikos , is also the name for the house. Houses followed several different types. It is probable that many of the earliest houses were simple structures of two rooms, with an open porch or pronaos , above which rose a low pitched gable or pediment . This form is thought to have contributed to temple architecture. The construction of many houses employed walls of sun-dried clay bricks or wooden framework filled with fibrous material such as straw or seaweed covered with clay or plaster, on

9322-498: The largest recorded statues of the age, such as the lost chryselephantine statues of Zeus at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and Athena at the Parthenon, Athens, both over 40 feet high, were once housed in them. The religion of ancient Greece was a form of nature worship that grew out of the beliefs of earlier cultures. However, unlike earlier cultures, man was no longer perceived as being threatened by nature, but as its sublime product. The natural elements were personified as gods of

9440-537: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe , the United States , and Canada , as well as in Greece itself following its independence in 1821. It revived many aspects of the forms and styles of ancient Greek architecture , in particular the Greek temple . A product of Hellenism , Greek Revival architecture is looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture , which

9558-449: The length of the house and opened at one side onto a small courtyard which admitted light and air. Larger houses had a fully developed peristyle (courtyard) at the centre, with the rooms arranged around it. Some houses had an upper floor which appears to have been reserved for the use of the women of the family. City houses were built with adjoining walls and were divided into small blocks by narrow streets. Shops were sometimes located in

9676-522: The light to the naos entering through the door. It has been suggested that some temples were lit from openings in the roof. A door of the Ionic Order at the Erechtheion (17 feet high and 7.5 feet wide at the top) retains many of its features intact, including mouldings, and an entablature supported on console brackets. (See Architectural Decoration, below) The widest span of a temple roof

9794-402: The longer sides. A slightly greater adjustment has been made to the entablature. The columns at the ends of the building are not vertical but are inclined towards the centre, with those at the corners being out of plumb by about 65 mm (2.6 in). These outer columns are both slightly wider than their neighbours and are slightly closer than any of the others. Ancient Greek architecture of

9912-486: The machinery to create a mill. The next step was to start adding brick coping to the tops of adobe walls, thus making the walls substantially more water tight. The cost of importing bricks along the Santa Fe Trail made building entire houses out of brick prohibitively expensive. It was not long before brickyards were established. Frequently, bricklayers laid the bricks in such a way as to produce dentils in

10030-525: The most famous of which painted with floral and motifs of sea life . The Mycenaean culture, which flourished on the Peloponnesus , was different in character. Its people built citadels, fortifications and tombs, and decorated their pottery with bands of marching soldiers rather than octopus and seaweed. Both these civilizations came to an end around 1100 BC, that of Crete possibly because of volcanic devastation, and that of Mycenae because of an invasion by

10148-575: The most formal type, for temples and other public buildings, is divided stylistically into three Classical orders , first described by the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius . These are: the Doric order , the Ionic order , and the Corinthian order , the names reflecting their regional origins within the Greek world. While the three orders are most easily recognizable by their capitals, they also governed

10266-588: The most notable being St.Pancras church by William and Henry William Inwood . In Scotland the style was avidly adopted by William Henry Playfair , Thomas Hamilton and Charles Robert Cockerell, who severally and jointly contributed to the massive expansion of Edinburgh 's New Town , including the Calton Hill development and the Moray Estate . Such was the popularity of the Doric in Edinburgh that

10384-537: The narrowing is not regular, but gently curved so that each column appears to have a slight swelling, called entasis below the middle. The entasis is never sufficiently pronounced as to make the swelling wider than the base; it is controlled by a slight reduction in the rate of decrease of diameter. The Parthenon , the Temple to the Goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, is referred to by many as

10502-481: The next generation of American architects. Greek revival architecture in the United States also included attention to interior decoration. The role of American women was critical for introducing a wholistic style of Greek-inspired design to American interiors. Innovations such as the Greek-inspired "sofa" and the " klismos chair" allowed both American women and men to pose as Greeks in their homes, and also in

10620-616: The numerous portraits of the period that show them lounging in Greek-inspired furniture. The second phase in American Greek Revival saw the pupils of Latrobe create a monumental national style under the patronage of banker and philhellene Nicholas Biddle , including such works as the Second Bank of the United States by William Strickland (1824), Biddle's home "Andalusia" by Thomas U. Walter (1835–1836), and Girard College , also by Walter (1833–1847). New York saw

10738-433: The optical illusions that make edges of objects appear concave and for the fact that columns that are viewed against the sky look different from those adjacent that are viewed against a shadowed wall. Because of these factors, the architects adjusted the plans so that the major lines of any significant building are rarely straight. The most obvious adjustment is to the profile of columns, which narrow from base to top. However,

10856-475: The origin of the style lies in simple wooden structures, with vertical posts supporting beams which carried a ridged roof. The posts and beams divided the walls into regular compartments which could be left as openings, or filled with sun dried bricks, lathes or straw and covered with clay daub or plaster. Alternately, the spaces might be filled with rubble. It is likely that many early houses and temples were constructed with an open porch or "pronaos" above which rose

10974-472: The other defining their distribution. Examples: The ideal of proportion that was used by ancient Greek architects in designing temples was not a simple mathematical progression using a square module. The math involved a more complex geometrical progression, the so-called golden mean . The ratio is similar to that of the growth patterns of many spiral forms that occur in nature such as rams' horns, nautilus shells, fern fronds, and vine tendrils and which were

11092-637: The palace that is now the Hermitage Museum is another example of the style. During the late period of the Ottoman Empire, Greek Revival Architecture had its examples in the empire. The prominent examples are Istanbul Archaeology Museums (1891) The style was generally popular in northern Europe, and not in the south (except for Greece itself), at least during the main period. Examples can be found in Poland , Lithuania , and Finland , where

11210-518: The particular artistic character that defines ancient Greek architecture are to be seen in the pottery of the Dorian Greeks from the 10th century BC. Already at this period it is created with a sense of proportion, symmetry and balance not apparent in similar pottery from Crete and Mycenae. The decoration is precisely geometric, and ordered neatly into zones on defined areas of each vessel. These qualities were to manifest themselves not only through

11328-442: The pinnacle of ancient Greek architecture. Helen Gardner refers to its "unsurpassable excellence", to be surveyed, studied and emulated by architects of later ages. Yet, as Gardner points out, there is hardly a straight line in the building. Banister Fletcher calculated that the stylobate curves upward so that its centres at either end rise about 65 millimetres (2.6 inches) above the outer corners, and 110 mm (4.3 in) on

11446-403: The preceding Mycenaean and Minoan cultures and that of the ancient Greeks, with much of the techniques and an understanding of their style being lost when these civilisations fell. Mycenaean architecture is marked by massive fortifications, typically surrounding a citadel with a royal palace, much smaller than the rambling Minoan "palaces", and relatively few other buildings. The megaron ,

11564-462: The prime example. Most remains are very incomplete ruins, but a number survive substantially intact, mostly outside modern Greece. The second important type of building that survives all over the Hellenic world is the open-air theatre , with the earliest dating from around 525–480 BC. Other architectural forms that are still in evidence are the processional gateway ( propylon ), the public square ( agora ) surrounded by storied colonnade ( stoa ),

11682-572: The private enthusiasm of connoisseurs up to the first decade of the 19th century. An early example of Greek Doric architecture married with a more Palladian interior, is the facade of the Revett-designed rural church of Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire, commissioned in 1775 by Lord Lionel Lyde of the eponymous manor. The Doric columns of this church, with their "pie-crust crimped" details, are taken from drawings that Revett made of

11800-426: The rise of stone architecture came the appearance of fired ceramic roof tiles . These early roof tiles showed an S-shape, with the pan and cover tile forming one piece. They were much larger than modern roof tiles, being up to 90 cm (35.43 in) long, 70 cm (27.56 in) wide, 3–4 cm (1.18–1.57  in ) thick and weighing around 30 kg (66 lb) apiece. Only stone walls, which were replacing

11918-468: The rooms towards the street. City houses were inward-facing, with major openings looking onto the central courtyard, rather than the street. The rectangular temple is the most common and best-known form of Greek public architecture. This rectilinear structure borrows from the Late Helladic, Mycenaean megaron , which contained a central throne room, vestibule, and porch. The temple did not serve

12036-492: The same function as a modern church, since the altar stood under the open sky in the temenos or sacred precinct, often directly before the temple. Temples served as the location of a cult image and as a storage place or strong room for the treasury associated with the cult of the god in question, and as a place for devotees of the god to leave their votive offerings , such as statues, helmets and weapons. Some Greek temples appear to have been oriented astronomically. The temple

12154-452: The sea vividly blue. The clear light and sharp shadows give a precision to the details of the landscape, pale rocky outcrops and seashore. This clarity is alternated with periods of haze that varies in colour to the light on it. In this characteristic environment, the ancient Greek architects constructed buildings that were marked by the precision of detail. The gleaming marble surfaces were smooth, curved, fluted, or ornately sculpted to reflect

12272-506: The sun, cast graded shadows and change in colour with the ever-changing light of day. Historians divide ancient Greek civilization into two eras, the Hellenic period (from around 900 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC), and the Hellenistic period (323 BC – 30 AD). During the earlier Hellenic period, substantial works of architecture began to appear around 600 BC. During the later (Hellenistic) period, Greek culture spread as

12390-429: The town council building ( bouleuterion ), the public monument, the monumental tomb ( mausoleum ) and the stadium . Ancient Greek architecture is distinguished by its highly formalised characteristics, both of structure and decoration. This is particularly so in the case of temples where each building appears to have been conceived as a sculptural entity within the landscape, most often raised on high ground so that

12508-499: The town was dirty and filthy... [with] miserable dirty streets [that] all look alike" while Mora was described by another US soldier, Frank S. Edwards as consisting "of a few mud huts", continuing, "nothing could be more discouraging to me fated to remain a whole year in Mexican territory than the first view of this town." The city of Santa Fe did not inspire any more admiration, "one traveler likened it to 'a dilapidated brick kiln or

12626-455: The wooden columns were of a very different form to Doric columns, being narrow at the base and splaying upward. The earliest forms of columns in Greece seem to have developed independently. As with Minoan architecture, ancient Greek domestic architecture centred on open spaces or courtyards surrounded by colonnades . This form was adapted to the construction of hypostyle halls within the larger temples. The evolution that occurred in architecture

12744-412: Was across the cella , or inner chamber. In a large building, this space contains columns to support the roof, the architectural form being known as hypostyle . It appears that, although the architecture of ancient Greece was initially of wooden construction, the early builders did not have the concept of the diagonal truss as a stabilising member. This is evidenced by the nature of temple construction in

12862-524: Was definitely not the case with the more luxurious marble temples, where colour was used sparingly to accentuate architectural highlights. Henri Labrouste also proposed a reconstruction of the temples at Paestum to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1829, decked out in startling colour, inverting the accepted chronology of the three Doric temples, thereby implying that the development of the Greek orders did not increase in formal complexity over time, i.e.,

12980-557: Was drawn from Roman architecture . The term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as an architecture professor at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1842. With newfound access to Greece and Turkey , or initially to the books produced by the few who had visited the sites, archaeologist–architects of the period studied the Doric and Ionic orders. Despite its universality rooted in ancient Greece,

13098-544: Was generally part of a religious precinct known as the acropolis . According to Aristotle , "the site should be a spot seen far and wide, which gives good elevation to virtue and towers over the neighbourhood". Small circular temples, tholoi were also constructed, as well as small temple-like buildings that served as treasuries for specific groups of donors. During the late 5th and 4th centuries BC, town planning became an important consideration of Greek builders, with towns such as Paestum and Priene being laid out with

13216-629: Was in a position to stamp his mark on Berlin after the catastrophe of the French occupation ended in 1813; his work on what is now the Altes Museum , Konzerthaus Berlin , and the Neue Wache transformed that city. Similarly, in Munich von Klenze's Glyptothek and Walhalla memorial were the fulfilment of Gilly's vision of an orderly and moral German world. The purity and seriousness of the style

13334-520: Was intended as an assertion of German national values and partly intended as a deliberate riposte to France, where it never really caught on. By comparison, Greek Revival architecture in France was never popular with either the state or the public. What little there is started with Charles de Wailly 's crypt in the church of St Leu-St Gilles (1773–80), and Claude Nicolas Ledoux 's Barriere des Bonshommes (1785–89). First-hand evidence of Greek architecture

13452-495: Was of very little importance to the French, due to the influence of Marc-Antoine Laugier 's doctrines that sought to discern the principles of the Greeks instead of their mere practices. It would take until Labrouste 's Neo-Grec of the Second Empire for Greek Revival architecture to flower briefly in France. Following the travels to Greece , Nicholas Revett, a Suffolk architect, and the better remembered James Stuart in

13570-551: Was towards the public building, first and foremost the temple, rather than towards grand domestic architecture such as had evolved in Crete, if the Cretan "palaces" were indeed domestic, which remains uncertain. Some Mycenaean tombs are marked by circular structures and tapered domes with flat-bedded, cantilevered courses. This architectural form did not carry over into the architecture of ancient Greece, but reappeared about 400 BC in

13688-574: Was used for ancient Greek buildings, including rubble, but the finest ashlar masonry was usually employed for temple walls, in regular courses and large sizes to minimise the joints. The blocks were rough hewn and hauled from quarries to be cut and bedded very precisely, with mortar hardly ever being used. Blocks, particularly those of columns and parts of the building bearing loads were sometimes fixed in place or reinforced with iron clamps, dowels and rods of wood, bronze or iron fixed in lead to minimise corrosion. Door and window openings were spanned with

13806-420: Was usually set in a hillside outside the town, and had rows of tiered seating set in a semicircle around the central performance area, the orchestra . Behind the orchestra was a low building called the skênê , which served as a store-room, a dressing room, and also as a backdrop to the action taking place in the orchestra. A number of Greek theatres survive almost intact, the best known being at Epidaurus by

13924-524: Was very popular in the south of the US, where the Palladian colonnade was already popular in façades, and many mansions and houses were built for the merchants and rich plantation owners; Millford Plantation is regarded as one of the finest Greek Revival residential examples in the country. Other notable American architects to use Greek Revival designs included Latrobe's student Robert Mills , who designed

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